Avalanche Epilogue
by tenjounotora
Summary: Spoilers for Season 3 - Just and expansion on the episode and Alan


Avalanche Epilogue

Alan had just finished breakfast and was looking forward to getting on his gaming console and download the new quest that had opened up, and while that was working he'd catch up on some vids he'd been meaning to watch. Either way, he was planning to have the day to himself—and after a week of rescues the figured he'd deserved it.

"Alan, there you are."

Alan was just settling down on the couch when Virgil appeared from around the wall. "Yep, and I'll be here all day."

"Afraid not, lil bro." Virgil had a smirk on his lips that Alan didn't quite like.

"What do you mean?"

"We've got some maintenance to take care of."

Alan sat up at that a pout already on his lips. "I finished Three's maintenance yesterday."

"Yes I know, I helped remember. Now it's time to to work on Two. Scott's going to help with the system's check, but I need someone to scrub those carbon deposits off of the engine cowling."

Alan sighed and went limp on the couch, his head leaned back looking up at his brother. "Do I have to?"

"Hey, we have to keep the birds in tip-top shape. I helped you with Three so it's only right you help with Two. Come on, sooner we get going sooner we can get done."

Alan let out another sigh before pulling himself to his feet.

"Hey, why all the sighing. This isn't anything new. You know there's a lot of maintenance with the birds."

"I know, I just get tired of doing maintenance all the time."

"It comes with the job, Alan."

Alan tried to force a smile as he walked past and Virgil patted him on the shoulder.

They made their way down to the hanger and Alan climbed up on top of Two with a brush in hand and a face mask on.

It didn't take long for the dust to surround him making him cough even with the mask on. He continued his work for a good hour, but had only cleaned off a small fraction of the cowling.

"There's gotta be an easier way of doing this." He sat on his haunches as the dust settled around him a little. That was when he saw his answer.

"Hey, MAX!" Alan waved at the robot which was on its way across the other side of the hanger.

The robot stopped in its tracks and quickly made its way up to where Alan was.

"Look, I need you to scrub the carbon deposits off the cowlings for me."

The robot beeped happily and pulled out his own brush, immediately getting to work.

Alan left MAX to the job and made his way to the shower, happy he had found a way out of his chores, and freshened up before heading back to the lounge to watch some videos.

He scrolled through his list, watched a couple of short vids, but then one particular blogger caught his attention.

"Cool, Brandon's live vlogging. Twenty-one million views, man he must be doing something super wild!"

Alan's jaw dropped when the feed came up and fell even more when it died.

"Busted."

Alan jumped and found both his older brothers looking down at him with their arms crossed.

"Guys, we have a situation."

Scott gave Alan a look. "No kidding. You're having MAX do all your maintenance for you."

"Nooo, I mean yeah of course I am, but this is serious! There's an emergency."

Virgil let out a small sigh. "It's not just an excuse to get out of doing chores?"

"Tracy's honor. Brandon Berrenger is caught in an avalanche, guys. I was watching it live."

"Okay, time to fly."

"Yes!"

"And you can finish your chores when we get back."

"Aww."

—

Thunderbird Two settled in its hanger as Virgil finished his post flight checks.

Alan shoved his seat back and stood. "I'm gonna go and watch Brandon's video!"

"I thought that was live?"

"Yeah, but he always posts the video for those that missed it."

"Well, you'll have to watch it later. You still have chores to do, remember?"

"Can't I do it tomorrow?"

"No, we have to keep up on the maintenance. We can't risk something breaking down on a rescue." Virgil stood up and walked over to Alan. "What has gotten into you recently? You never slacked off on maintenance before."

"Nothing! I just wanted to watch his video." Alan grumbled and then sighed. "Fine, I can watch it when I finish right?"

"Sure, I'll even come and watch it with you. Maybe we'll get Scott to join us as well."

"Sweet!" With a woot of excitement Alan jumped off the platform before it had even finished lowering to the ground.

Alan went to work scrubbing Two's engine cowlings. It took him about three hours to get all the carbon deposits off of the bird. He had been excited to watch the video, so much he took a small break when he was alerted of the video's upload.

He sat on the top of Thunderbird Two and watched the whole thing before getting back to work.

When he was finally done he made his way over to where his brothers were standing and discussing something.

"What else do you need me to do?" Alan was covered in dirt as he stood in front of his brothers. His normal smile nowhere to be seen.

"Alan, you feeling okay?" Scott walked over and squeezed Alan's shoulder.

Alan just shrugged off the hand. "I'm fine."

"You don't seem so fine. Usually you're on a mission high for the rest of the day? Especially with the type of mission we just had. We heard you whooping for a bit, but then it got awfully quiet. What's up?"

"Nothing. Can I go now?" Alan wasn't looking at his brothers, but just kicked his toe at the cement floor.

Scott frowned but then nodded. "Yeah. Go get cleaned up."

They watched Alan slump out of the hanger and then looked at each other.

"Any idea what that's about?" Scott turned to Virgil an eyebrow raised.

"Not completely, but he was acting a little off all day, don't you think? I mean, I know he's shirked off chores before—"

"And used MAX to cover for him."

"Yes, but it's usually just his house chores. I've never had him shirk out of maintenance duties."

"That is true." Scott scratched his head a little. "He did fine on the mission, though he kept trying to get onto Brandon's video."

"Yeah, he tried rushing me so he'd get there before you. He was afraid he'd miss the action. I had to remind him that Dad wasn't doing all this for fame or recognition, but it didn't seem to sink in much."

"Why is he so concerned with attention all of a sudden? If you worry too much about it you become what Brandon is—and that's not necessarily a good thing." Scott couldn't help rolling his eyes.

"Alan seems to think it and Brandon are cool, though."

"What's cooler than flying a rocket into space and going to Mars or Europa?"

"But no one knows about it."

"The people he saved do and that's the point. Who cares what random people think?"

"Alan does. I wonder—" Virgil slipped past his brother and grabbed his tablet off of the nearby workbench. "He mentioned wanting to watch the video from today—" He brought up Brandon's blog and hit play on the latest video.

Scott leaned on the bench next his brother and watched the video that popped up.

Virgil couldn't help but snicker at Scott trying to catch the drone, but Scott stopped the video before it could end.

"Brandon really did avoid getting Alan into the shot." Virgil put the tablet down.

"More than you know." Scott pushed himself off of the bench. "Alan should have been in quite a few of those shots."

"You mean he cut him out?"

"Looks like it. Alan must have watched it while he was cleaning. I'm going to go find him and get this straightened out."

Scott made his way up into the house and started searching for Alan. It didn't take long as he had just gone to his room.

"Alan?"

"Go away."

"Not likely." Scott slipped through the door and shut it behind him before sitting down on the vacant bed. "Care to talk about it?"

"No."

Scott sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Look, I won't pretend to understand why you care so much about Brandon. All he does is get into trouble. I'm sure this won't be the last time we see him."

"But he's so cool about it!" Alan flopped over onto his back and sat up. "He had over twenty-one million viewers on today's vlog. Everybody and anybody watches him."

"That shouldn't matter. We're doing this to help people, not to get attention."

"I know, but I just thought it would be cool to be on his vlog. There on location with Brandon 'The Bear' Barrenger, the danger of another avalanche!" Alan sighed. "But every time I tried to get into the picture he'd move or turn the camera off. Even at the very end. And then I went to watch the video again and—"

"And he completely cut you out of it."

"You saw it huh?"

"Part of it."

When we were in the sherpa pod he told me how cool I was and that there was no way he could be cooler than me. But also that that meant there was no way I was getting on camera cause if I was on camera then no one would be looking at him."

"That sounds pretty nice—in a roundabout way."

"Yeah, I thought so at first too, but then for him to completely cut me out—he even cut out Goose saying my name and any audio the camera caught—yet you and Virgil were still in it. Like, you guys are just as cool as me! You do even more cool stuff really, and it's fine for you guys to be on camera." Alan pulled his knees up to his chest.

"Maybe he's jealous? You get to do all kinds of cool stuff all the time, and he has to search it out."

Alan shrugged. "But he's still out there doing really cool stuff. Snowboarding down a mountain, spelunking in one of the deepest caves on the Earth, water skiing in the middle of the pacific attached to a helicopter—"

"He what?"

Alan waved it off. "He figures out something fun to do and he doesn't worry about what others think, he just goes and has fun and his viewers are along for the ride."

Scott looked down at his brother. He sometimes forgot just how much younger Alan was. He's out there flying a spaceship and doing rescues and he's barely sixteen. Not only that, but he's been doing it since he was fourteen. Then if you looked back farther, ever since their father disappeared he's done almost nothing but train and study.

"Are you not enjoying being part of IR anymore? Would you rather be in Brandon's shoes? Going out and doing crazy stunts to entertain millions?"

Alan's head snapped up, his eyes wide. "What? No! I mean Yes! I mean, of course I still enjoy being here! You'd have to be crazy not to! I mean, where else could I fly a rocket to Mars or Mercury?!"

"Alright, alright. I was just checking." Scott couldn't help but laugh at his brother's reaction. "So, what is it then? What made you want to skip out on us this morning?"

Alan shrugged his head dropped again. "I dunno. I just—I wanted to do something fun instead, and I guess sometimes the easiest way is by watching Brandon or others like him."

"Hmm…" Scott leaned back on the bed a little and watched his youngest brother for a moment. "If you could go out and do anything, absolutely anything, right now. What would it be?"

Alan frowned a little as he glanced up at his brother, but took a moment and thought about it. "I guess go snowboarding."

"Even after what happened to Brandon?"

"Well, it's kinda because of what happened to Brandon. I can't remember the last time I went snowboarding." Alan shrugged a little. "But with all the rescues, and maintenance we've had recently—not to mention the Chaos Crew, The Mechanic, The Hood, finding out about Dad, Gordon's accident—there's just no way I could do anything like that."

"Why not?"

"Because we have work to do? And we can't put off maintenance, what if something went wrong on a rescue just cause we put it off for a day?"

"That's very wise." Scott smiled. "Well, we're pretty much done with the major stuff. I think Virgil could handle the rest. John could come down and help out if there's a rescue. Grandma can run comms. How about you and I go off and do some snowboarding tomorrow?"

Alan stared at his brother, his mouth hanging open. "A-are you serious?"

Scott held up his hand. "Tracy's honor."

The next second his was thrown back onto the bed, his brother on top of him in a tight hug.

"Aw man, I gotta find my snowboard. I think it's down in storage. I hope my coat and boots are down there too, I wonder if they still fit—"

—

"Ah, Gordon, I wish you could have been there!" Alan was in the lounge, standing by the table as he talked to his brother who was laid out once again on the couch. "I went whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, and then skidded to a stop, and then there were some ramps and I went 'waahaa' as I went off them. I did flips and turns and oh man it was so awesome!"

"Sounds like you owe me a trip once things settle down a bit."

"Definitely, we gotta all go—well, maybe not John, he'd probably just tumble down the whole mountain."

Scott was laughing from his spot behind their father's desk.

"I take it the impromptu vacation was what he needed?" Virgil was standing next to Scott his arms crossed as they watched Alan reenact his day.

"Yeah, I think it did. He just needed a day to do something fun that didn't have the prerequisite of someone being in trouble.

"So he just needed a day to be a kid. He hasn't had much of hose since Dad disappeared."

"That he has not. He's grown up so much the past eight years, I think we sometimes forget that he's not quite an adult yet."

"Yeah, but our schedule's only going to get busier the closer we are to going after Dad."

"I know. That's why I went ahead and took him today. Not sure when the next chance will be."

"Well, hopefully this will tide him over in the mean time." Virgil chuckled a little as Alan went into a full retelling of how Scott face planted in the snow.


End file.
